The Change: Birth

The first part of my book "The Change: Birth"

 I awoke to the unpleasant but expected sensation of my mother stripping off my clothes.

I didn’t bother to open my eyes.

There wasn’t a point. I simply sighed quietly and waited for it all to be over with. I remembered fondly a time when things like this weren’t necessary…when I could simply wake up and get dressed and check my numerous social media networks like any other girl my age. I longed for those times again. But there was nothing I could do to change my new life. This needed to be done.

Her hands were offensively cold this morning, so it took a lot more effort than normal to put myself in my happy place.

My happy place. It was getting harder and harder to find. Days like this, it was hard to stay there �" to place my mind outside my body enough to ignore what was happening to me.

So I just gave up and waited.

It was a ritual. When my mother finally finished, I would carefully and meticulously strip off her clothes, like she did mine, then inspect her body just as thoroughly and mechanically as she did mine. This was something that we did every single morning. A ritual. Which meant Every. Single. Day.

It was a necessary evil.

Her hands stopped abruptly on my lower belly.

Her hands never stopped.

I was keenly aware of every motion of her cold, calloused hands as they inspected the bottom half of my stomach. My smooth, freckled, possibly diseased stomach. I fought hard to keep my eyes closed. There wasn't much of a point to opening them. Either something was there…or not.

She was looking for signs of The Change. Something we’ve so far managed to avoid - that has almost entirely devastated our world, our species, to the point of near extinction. Or maybe extinction, I wasn’t sure. None of us were. The us being me and my mother and my dog, Max; the only humans I know of that haven't succumbed to it. No one knows why or how The Change came to be; it was a sudden out-of-the-blue type of thing.

It took over the world so quickly, like an unstoppable, fast moving tide. An invisible juggernaut of death. Why my mother and I (and Maxx) were able to avoid The Change so far is...well...beyond my understanding. Or hers, even though she won't admit it. She calls it “God,” but...that's a concept I have absolutely no belief in.

Her hands lightly patted my belly and withdrew.

“All done. Now do me,” my mom finally said.

Once my heart started beating again I opened my eyes and gave her a look that could possibly kill if I put any more intensity behind it. She smiled wearily. It looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

I reluctantly shuffled out of my nice, warm bed and stood up, automatically going through same impersonal inspection that she went through with me.

It didn’t take long. I found none.

Maxx, seemingly on cue, trotted in and jumped on my bed, raising himself up until his front paws rested on my chest while he went about power-licking my face and neck. I sat down to pet him, then took him in my arms and initiated a semi-playful wrestling match. Not that it was much of a match - he outweighed me by more than 30 pounds, and most of that was pure muscle. He could pretty much man-handle (dog-handle?) me if he wanted. He was definitely a beast of a dog. And I loved him.

He settled down by roughly climbing on my lap and gently gnawing my hand. His nails hurt my naked skin, but it was a good hurt, and I didn't really mind. While I cuddled and scratched him, I searched his body for signs of The Change as best as I could. I found nothing.

So another day of life then.

After several minutes of semi-hostile affection, I shooed him off my lap and started getting dressed for the day. I had a long way to go, and a short time to do it in...

Author's Note

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Reviews

[Xenaphobic]

This is a very intriguing concept. Although I have seen other things like this has done quite a bit, I find myself wanting to read further. If only to discover what the change is (alien, zombie, plague?) and how it effects the body to need these checks. The only criticism I have is a few spelling inconsistencies (Max, Maxx) and some minor punctuation infractions. There are also a few sentences that say the same thing as the sentence before them just in a different wording but this could be a style choice so I am not counting as an issue.